Monday, August 31, 2015

My nephew has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and I found a lot of similarity's with the child in this article & my nephew. The article was very inspiring to me. My nephew tends to have outbursts, and talks out of turn, gets excited and has mild cases of ADD (Just like his Uncle!). He is however extremely creative, an amazing lego & minecraft guy, and he's a huge spiderman & fantasy fan.

Lately I've been reading the mini6 rules, and I've been enjoying them a lot. Off the top of my head, I am sure I could pull off a super hero RPG from that. Alternatively some Basic D&D or Blueholme might just be the perfect thing. I would have to add in the initiative rules for a Blueholme game though, as per the article. I think its good to have a set order of play, especially in this case. Another thing I quite like is descending AC in this instance, as it promotes subtracting.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

So far a very good read. It appears to be a whole series called "Twilight Of Kerberos". I grabbed it from the local library ebooks online.

Product Description:Forced onto the streets of Turnitia after the army destroys his home and murders his parents, Lucius Kane becomes an excellent thief, gaining notoriety in his new profession. Soon drawn into a war between rival thieves guilds, Kane fights for friends and profit but finds himself pulled into the darker and more mysterious world of the Shadowmage. Mercenary practitioners who combine stealth with magic, Shadowmages make the best scouts, infiltrators, spies...and assassins!

Forced onto the streets of Turnitia after the army destroys his home and murders his parents, Lucius Kane becomes an excellent thief, gaining notoriety in his new profession. Soon drawn into a war between rival thieves guilds, Kane fights for friends and profit but finds himself pulled into the darker and more mysterious world of the Shadowmage. Mercenary practitioners who combine stealth with magic, Shadowmages make the best scouts, infiltrators, spies ... and assassins!

This stunning fantasy features a never before seen final part of the Shadowmage Trilogy, completing the saga of Lucius Kane. Much sought after but previously hard-to-find in the U.S. and Canada the first books in the Twilght of Kerberos.

Requirements: NonePrime Requisite: STR and CONHit Dice: 1d8Maximum Level: None (as fighter) Myrmidon are mighty fighters, followers of Achilles (or some other great warrior). What separates Myrmidon's from typical fighters is their ability to survive under the harshest conditions and gravest wounds. Constitution Checks: When a Myrmidon suffers from deathly wounds (0 HP or less) they can make a Constitution check and regain 2 lost HPs. To make a Constitution check, roll 1d20, if the result is less than the players Constitution score, the check is a success. A roll of 1 is always a success and a roll of 20 is always a failure. When rolling a constitution check subtract -2 to the roll.Myrmidon use saving throws, attack tables, and experience tables as fighters. Attacking: Myrmidon's are great with spears, and receive a +1 on any ranged attack roll. Defence: Myrmidon's are very adept with the use of a shield, as such they receive - 2 to their armour class when carrying a shield (normally - 1 to armour class). Background (1d6)1. Soldier 2. Arena Gladiator3. Executioner 4. Bounty Hunter5. Royal Guard6. Tax CollectorEquipmentTraditionally most Myrmidon's carry a shield, a spear (or two), a dagger, they tend to wear scale mail, and helmets. (Armour Class of 4 with shield and scale mail).

Friday, August 21, 2015

2. The horn of a Minotaur, when carried on a person it adds a +1 to Constitution. Very heavy

3. Full deck of playing cards, if any face card is flipped randomly an illusion of it will appear for 1d6 turns.

4. Magnifying glass that allows the PC to see the contents treasure chests.

5. A torch that glows bright blue, lasts twice as long as a regular torch.

6. Jade thieves tools which include a glass cutter.

7. Pair of wool socks. When worn add + 1 to Dex.

8. Rather large tome that contains all known languages. Wisdom ability check to translate any language using book.

9. Get out of death free card. This small piece of paper clearly states "get out of death" on it. The item can be used once, in the case of a Save Or Die situation. After that it magically disintegrates in a puff of smoke.

10. Mirror Of Mirror Selves. When a PC looks into this mirror it creates 3 large faces of the PC in random locations within the room.

11. Purple Pudding - Contained with in a vial is a gooey purple pudding substance. When applied to a wound it heals the PC (to full health), but turns the affected area purple. 4 applications per vial.

12. Extremely rare cooper coin. Written on the coin in common are the letters XP and an upwards arrow. Whoever finds the coin does not reap any benefits however when the coin is passed to another player, that person automatically levels up. (one time use only).

13. The Pan o' Plenty. a rather mundane looking frying pan. When placed on a fire it magically creates enough rations for all the PCs. 4 charges.

14. Lucky Goblins Foot, this item is a gnarled half rotted foot from a Goblin which smells absolutely horrid. When carried it allows a PC to re roll a saving throw. 4 charges

15. The Red Dress. Legend tells of this dress, having been worn by various princess's over the years. When worn the PC adds +2 to Charisma, but the dress does not have any benefit on AC. It also decreases DEX by - 1, as its long and flow-ey.

16. Lycanthropes Whistle. When blown this whistle will call on 1d4 Lycanthropes to do the bidding of the whistle blower. The only caveat being that the Lycanthropes must be feed something after their initial use. 4 charges.

17. The Mask of Seamus, this dark ebony mask is in the form of a male human face. It is entirely made of metal with no straps, and must be placed on the head of a human in order for the magic to take effect. The mask adds +2 to Charisma, and + 2 Intelligence, however the wearer is muffled and cannot speak properly.

18. The Unending Map, this blank map will show the shortest route to a goal that the PC has, and will point them in the right direction. 5 charges.

19. Hood Of Darkvision, when worn this hood allows a PC to see in the dark.

20. The Tome Of Randomness, if a PC looks thru the pages of this book, random illusions and events occur. Sometime a monster will appear, a portal to another world, a surprised looking piece of fruit with a sword, sometimes nothing, sometimes one of the above items will appear out of thin air, on occasion the reader will age tremendously, and in some cases they've even become an infant!

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

There is something about sitting in the bush with a pen and a large notebook for 8 days. I managed to plow thru 5 books in the 9 days I was off. Write a ton of ideas down for goblins greed and the "I'm never going to finish this mega dungeon" mega dungeon project. I am in the process of converting all of notes to google doc. More often than not I'm like "what the hell is that scribble"??

However in a good place.

I even managed to draw up a few maps.

And make some decisions on content. Hex crawl map idea using a hand drawn map rather than using a cartographer program. (the map is coming along).

Basically I lived and breathed fantasy stuff whilst enjoying the sunshine and mosquito's.

Monday, August 17, 2015

I did the month long D&D competition, then I started the revised version of the same blog idea and I never finished it. I recently noticed that we are now doing #rpgaday2015, and taking a page out of Zak's book err..blog I'm just going to sit down and write the whole thing now. As I stated I'm on vacation, currently having a nice cup of coffee and procrastinating cutting the grass. And of course I like doing these types of things as it forces you to write.

2. Kickstarter game you are most pleased you backed.
Bad Shane! I haven't backed any KS's yet. There was one super cool Labyrinth Lord video game that didn't get funded. It was super old school bard's tale esq.

3. Favourite New RPG game of the last 12 months.
I really liked the idea and the playability of Crimson Dragon Slayer. I had a very light hand in giving some ideas out on that one. The system is pretty cool and usable for other things.

4. Most surprising game.
I'll go with Fifth edition on this one. I never had a chance to play the 3rd or 4th editions but from what I've heard they were a bit nightmarish. I find fifth edition surprising in that it feels like 2nd edition to me, the chassis is a bit easier however. There are still things that my head hasn't quite figured out, but its getting there.

5. Most recent RPG purchase.
The fifth edition DM screen. BAH! I shoulda returned it. For $18 CDN I coulda made a better homemade job myself. A friend of mine is going to start DMing soon and I think he maybe borrowing it. Probably long term. The only good thing about the screen is that its a bit lower so you can see your players. That was one thing that annoyed me about the 2nd edition screen that I have. (which btw had a crap ton of stuff on it).

6. Most recent RPG played
Fifth edition, however I really want to get some Barbarians of Lemuria, Mutant Future or Advanced fighting fantasy going.

8. Favourite appearance of RPG's in media
Going with Big Bang Theory on this one. Love that show, makes me proud to be a nerd. However I have heard that some true nerds don't like all the attention its causing to us. Nerds... lol.

Sheldon Cooper: The entrance to the dungeon is a moss covered door. You manage to open it only to find yourself face to face with a hideous, foul-smelling, moss-covered ogre. What do you do?

13. Favourite RPG PodcastRoll for Initiative podcast - it was one of the first podcasts I found that introduced me to the OSR, I've listened to a few other ones and have really dug them as well, but I keep coming back to this one.

14. Favourite RPG accessory.
Without dice it would be difficult to play these games, so dice. oh and my dice bag. Buy a dice bag and get a free bottle of whiskey!

15. Longest Campaign Every Played.
I've never really played in a super long campaign, things always tended to crap out on me. writing furiously just to find out that we had moved on to something new. (this was in high school). Now it appears we are starting a new campaign shortly. Where I will be a player. After the starter set, I plan to run a mutant future campaign sandbox for awhile.

16. Longest game session every played.
I am sure we played a good 8 hours or so of Advanced Fighting Fantasy back in the day. Of course there were breaks for SNES and Sega.

19. Favourite Supers RPG
I've heard a lot about DC heroes. I've never played a super hero RPG. The thought has never crossed my mind to tell you the truth. I think I am so mired in Lord Of The Rings fantasy, that anything else just seems weird. Eventually I'd love to try CoC, Mutant Future etc.

20. Favourite horror RPG
see above, apparently I'm a big fan of dwarves & elves. Venger just released this, do you know about it? The outer presence.

21. Favourite RPG setting

Titan. The world of Fighting fantasy. It's equal parts high fantasy and dark fantasy. I need to try Red & Pleasant Land. And I am so tired of the realms. Mostly because I am so behind. (still in 2nd edition whilst running the starter set, still trying to figure out how to explain Tieflings). Its funny, I like the realms, but because there is so much written about it I feel like I can't touch it, can't fuck with it. Just leave it alone and let it breath by itself. I need a new world to destroy (mental note create a new world let a bunch of people destroy it).

22. Perfect gaming environment

Despite the fact that I would love to be surrounded by suits of armour and random torture tools, I am perfectly happy with smoked meat & and good friends, and of course beer. This of course reminds me of Friar Tuck from Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves movie *with Kevin Costner.

"Grain which any fool can eat, but which god intended a higher purpose, let us give praise to our maker by learning about beer.

23. Perfect Game For You. (me?).

This is seriously the only question that I needed to think about. My perfect game is a low level game, where its deadly serious, and the PC's might die. But with some luck, and excellent role playing and possibly a few DM slip ups everything comes together and the Heroes become HEROES! There is a reason that there are a lot of low level D&D type modules out there. Everyone likes to start off a character with hopes & dreams. See KOTB

24. Favourite House Rule

I honestly don't have any specific house rules, however I am a big fan of my resurrection rules, and whenever that happens they will be used at the time (fuck it tooting the horn). That said, since I'm playing 5e currently I am pretty much done with the idea of a saving throw for each ability stat. I like death saving throws (and the 3 strikes you are out rule of 5e) and I really like the Swords & Wizardry one saving throw rule.

25. Favourite revolutionary game mechanic.

its a toss up between advantage/disadvantage which is basically friggin hilarious, and DC's (while not old school it does make things easier for the GM).

26. Favourite Inspiration for your game.

So here's a story. My wife acquired a Kobo, and read thru pretty much everything on it. I got jealous, I then read thru all the cool stuff on it. INSPIRATION. Go and grab a Kobo (or similar ereader). don't download anything, just read all of the pre-loaded books on the system. ie classics. You will find your inspiration, they are easy to port. When you are done reading that stuff ie classics, goto https://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg offers over 49,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. Once you get thru those come talk to me about inspiration

There was choose your own adventure, and then there was FIGHTING FANTASY. (thank the gods that my Mom worked at a book store = discount. There was a time that all my friends had them and we would trade and whoever had the most won. Why do they not do this any more? Good way to get kids to read). I know there has been a variety of versions of the titles, but all of mine had green spines (I do not know how early that was, but I think it was fairly early in the line of titles). I have been able to grab a few here & there at book meets/markets/swaps. Unfortunately divorce spelled disaster for my initial collection. Despite how much I'd love to have He-Man (and GI JOE) again, I would be much happier with these.

Okay so obviously we all know that Wil Wheaton is basically our god king, and Marilyn Manson plays D&D with Zak S. BUT Did you know that I play D&D with the bass player from Silent Dissonance? Yah no probably not. He's a friggin cool guy! He married me. He's my Wifes cousin. He's not technically a celebrity....but in my eyes he is! (I even made him wear a kilt, totally fine with it btw).

Kurt (normally a Dwarf on the left, moi on the right).

31. Favourite non RPG thing to come out of RPG-ing

First off, that question is inherently funny. Tis a silly question perhaps, but I think before RPGing there was Monty Python, or maybe it was around the same time? I do not know, nor have the google fu to care, but I'd love to be a a Knight of Ni. (either that or a drow priestess of Lolth with a ridiculous female English accent.)

Editor's note: I managed to cut the grass prior to finishing this. score.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

I've been slowly working on some writing, I came up with the idea of a Sanity stat for this adventure. Because of the world that PC's will get plunged into it will become important to remain sane, and to try and get the hell outta the world quickly.

Sanity: Everyone starts off with 3d6 Sanity. For everyday trapped on the plane of existence loost 1 point of sanity. When your score drops to -5 you become totally insane.

Hallucinations:
1. You see a lovely woman/man, they gaze alluringly at you.
2. a nice dog sleeping in the sunshine.
3. a warm apple pie appears every time you are hungry.
4. cold tankard filled with beer. (all drinks appear this way).
5. Roasted stuff pig.
6. A lamp with a genie appearing.
7. A sword in a stone, that looks easy to pull out.
8. A large beautiful beach with palm trees and all you can drink mojitos.
9. You believe that you woke up wearing golden chainmail.
10. You see your grandparents/parents
11. You believe that you are the captain of the royal guard.
12. You believe that you can fly, and have sprouted wings.
13. You think you are great wizard, any spell you cast feels way more powerful and intense. You believe that you know every spell there is.
14. You think an assassin is trying to kill you.
15. You continually hear a bell and salivate.
16. You believe that you were cordially invited to a tea party in the forest by a scruffy looking rabbit.
17. You think that you can speak any language.
18. Every thing you see is in black & white.
19. A ghost follows you wherever you go. It wails while you sleep.
20. When people talk all you hear is beautiful music.

Friday, August 7, 2015

It appears we are going to do a underdark campaign after the starter set. By the sounds of it we will have dark dwarves, dark gnomes, drow, and possibly mind flayers. I am in the process of learning all of the character classes in 5e. What better way than to basically create one of everything. The first PC I created is a Priestess of "insert drow religion here". We haven't quite decided if it will be Lolth or not yet. Her name is Zeestra Kilsek (thank you drow of the underdark).

Here is part of the convo with my DM.

personality trait - if you do me injurty I will crush you ruin your name, salt your fields
ideals = i must prove my shit, without the help of my famjam

bonds. nothing is more important to me than my fucked up spider queen loving family, except the males, they suck. I hope the Matron mother sacrifices one to lolth

flaws. i too often hear insults directed at me. quick to anger

DM: You need another personality trait I think.

Me: Okay I'll go with the hating males thing, and eventually do a One Drow show of the vagina monologues. Its going to be epic!

PS. Mr. DM, I think if it works everyone else should keep their current characters.

After our starter set 5e adventure wraps up, I am hoping that another player of mine will be DMing a new campaign, after that I want to run some Mutant Future! Having a brief discussion I decided that it will probably be a hack version of MF rather than the original rules.

Whilst doing a bit of research I caught this, which might be the ticket.

So hopefully there will be a bit of a quick start rules that comes out, more for curiosity than because I'm cheap. I hope they add the funnel. That said the price isn't too bad.

As far as a Mutant Future hack, here's a few ideas I have.

* Convert the whole damn thing to ascending ac. (cuz math annoys me).

* Keep the 4 saves from MF (I like em).

* Since levelling is fairly straight forward in MF, I think I'll just add a system of +1's depending on what level the PC's are. (Much like the way basicfantasy.org does it for fighters).
* In mutant future there are mind attacks as well as regular melee attacks. Wotc just realased a 5e hack for Psionics , which might be something that could be incorporated. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/awakened-mystic

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

So! this is a crap ton of fun! I figured I'd start off with an actual world rather than an up close and personal section. That said I think it would be relatively easy to create a province section that was a bit more up close. The program is currently in beta, it allows you to save, and download maps. I have emailed the good folks at http://inkarnate.com/ to find out if I am allowed to use a map created with their software for commercial use. I am waiting to hear back. In the meantime this will be my new lunch fun time!

The only issue i have with the program is the following. Save often if you don't like something you can come back to the previous version of the map. There is NO UNDO at this point. As well the mountains come out quite nice and the terrain is magical when you use it, however the forests could be a bit larger for my liking. There is no way to change this yet in the program.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Vagrants are not technically thieves although often they do have some thieving abilities that they have picked up living on the streets of large cities. What they do posses is an unnatural ability to stay alive. Whether it be thru trickery, gambling, out right stealing, and on occasion murder. They always manage to make their way in the world. More often than not Vagrants are neutral or evil aligned. Rarely you will find a good aligned vagrant who is just down on his luck. As far as Weapons & Armour go, Vagrants will only have what they manage to scrape together from various sources: looting dead bodies, stealing from smiths. Vagrants start with little to no GP's as starting wealth. (Roll 1d2 x 5, if a roll of a 1 comes up they Vagrant carries no gold)

Luck!
Vagrants have one extra starting ability along with the basic 6 as every character does. Roll 3d6 this is the total Luck score that the Vagrant has. Mark this down as "Total Luck". Make an extra column with "Current Luck", this is the luck that you currently have leftover from your original total.

Using luck in the game.

- re rolling any attack, damage, ability check, or saving throw roll
- situations where the PC maybe trying to outwit or charm another character, NPC or monster
- On a roll of 1 when re-rolling damage - double the damage.
- Have the DM re roll a monster reaction.

Have the player roll 1d20, if the player rolls under is luck stat he will be lucky. A 1 is a automatic success and 20 is automatic failure. Please keep the original score written down, and deduct one point and add this to the column of current luck. When the Luck stat runs out the player will no longer be lucky, and may have to go on a great quest to regain his/her Luck.